Archive for May, 2013

“Bart, why’d you take the blame?” – Lisa Simpson “Cause, I didn’t want to wreck your life. You got the brains and the talent to go as far as you want, and when you do, I’ll be right there to borrow money.” – Bart Simpson

The weather has turned nice, people are having fun outdoors, and Zombie Simpsons won’t blight anyone’s television for months; it must be Memorial Day weekend, the semi-official start of summer time. To celebrate, albeit a bit early, Toronto’s mayor smoked rock and got filmed doing it. But, oh, Canada, we were ahead of you on that, and The Simpsons made fun of it to boot. In addition, we’ve got a wonderfully random assortment of links this week, with a great new Tumblr (don’t fuck this up like you fuck everything else up, Yahoo), an official update to the Simpsons ride in Floreda, some more links about the money pit game, and a great variety of fan made stuff, from nail art to a web comic to some good, old fashioned photoshop.

Enjoy.

springfeeled – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is this relatively short Tumblr with nothing but weird Simpsons .gifs. Skinner demanding the kids knock it off from “Bart the Lover” and the listless teenagers from “Homerpalooza” are my favorites, but to each their shimmery own. (Thanks to reader y o for sending this in.)

The Simpsons | PixlBurger – This is a webcomic, one of the panes says “everything you need to know about western popular culture is contained entirely in these sacred volumes”. Yup.

Speaking today at a conference organized by Google Inc. north of London, Miliband showed a picture of the cartoon villain to illustrate a speech about business practices.

“He’s not such a good guy, he leaves radioactive nuggets lying around,” Miliband said of Burns. “Of course, he is a cartoon character, but I could have substituted him with RBS or some of the other big banks before the financial crash.”

Normal people hate freemium games because they have a basic understanding of what constitutes “evil” in our modern world, and also because getting six requests a day to build fake burger restaurants with your aunt is a torture no human being should ever have to experience again.

In a 1997 episode of The Simpsons, rotund patriarch Homer stood before the residents of Springfield with a glass of cold beer and encouraged his neighbours to join him in a toast.

“To alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems,” he professed.

Director Todd Phillips has been drinking from the same barrel as Homer since 2009 when his booze-fuelled bender The Hangover became an unexpected smash hit and snagged a coveted Golden Globe as Best Comedy.

The area, which will be named "Springfield" after the town in which "The Simpsons" is set, is being built alongside the existing Simpsons Ride in Universal Studios Florida. It will feature roughly a half-dozen settings from the famously satirical TV show.

Among them: Krusty Burger, a restaurant serving a "Krusty-certified meat sandwich," and Moe’s Tavern, which will sell "Duff Beer," a fictional alcoholic brew that Universal says will be created exclusively for the theme park. Others will include Lard Lad’s Donuts, The Frying Dutchman, Luigi’s Pizza, The Android’s Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop, and Duff Gardens.

Homer Simpson vs. Captain America – This is just a message board discussion that brings up the relevant point that by now, Homer has demonstrated as many super powers as an actual super hero, and s/he mostly cites things that came late in the show before Zombie Simpsons even got started.

I’ve also been re-watching The Simpsons. Seasons 4 and 8 so far, with 5 waiting for me tonight. I won’t be going farther than season 9, but I’m definitely going to enjoy all 9 of the first seasons over the next few months.

Tapped Out – And for Tapped Out fans who want to engage their inner nine-year-old. (Also, and I’m not linking it because it looks scam-y as hell, I did find a link this week to people gold farming that game.)

If you decide to continue on, then PLEASE stop with the multiple Grandpa Simpson back stories (one of the 2 this season was just plain awful) because we’ve have had more than enough of them. Also, don’t recycle older stories (Moe’s bar has become popular and then dropped back down to squalor at least 3 or 4 times by my count). Perhaps consider re-watching and analyzing older episodes to remind yourselves of what used to work and what used to make the show utterly hysterical and popular.

Hope springs eternal.

Tell Aaronson and Zykowski:

“Who needs his money? We’re getting by okay.” – Homer Simpson “Son, you gotta help me! I hit three people on the way over here, and I don’t have any insurance! So, how’s by you?” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson

Because FOX sucks at scheduling, how about a two episode season finale? Why not!:

After a clumsy introduction they’ve convinced themselves that repeating the phrase “Ki Ya” over and over again is funny. Also, why is Marge bathing Bart?

This video with Pascal, in a voice that sounds like Azaria trying to keep himself awake, is just as boring as a real museum exhibit. I miss the zinc filmstrip.

“Because people always laugh when you say sixty-nine. No one knows why.” – I bet this line got a big laugh in the screenwriting elective at Hollywood Upstairs Film College.

Even before the show fell apart, Marge was usually a secondary character to Homer, but this is ridiculous. Here are her lines, in order, from the dinner table scene: – “I still can’t believe it was Carl who took your winnings. I thought it would’ve been you, or you, or you.” – “Maybe he had a reason to give you the ultimate screw over.” – “You don’t know where Carl is from?” – “Maybe if you talked less about guy stuff you’d know more about your so-called friend.” – She just repeats the crappy jokes as exposition in case anyone who was dozing missed them the first time.

Homer and Marge are discussing him going to Iceland (just in case anyone in the audience needed to be told a third time). At first, it’s just the two of them. And then, just like that, Bart and Lisa are sitting in their parents room . . . right until six seconds later when they aren’t.

Okay, “Hodor’s Travel Guide” is pretty good.

Ooh, the exciting Sigur Ros background music scene! That needed to be there.

Now comes the exciting foot chase component to the car chase we just sat through.

They catch Carl, and are immediately transported to a restaurant without having discussed anything in the interim. Seamless!

Carl’s little soliloquy on friendship is about the third time they’ve discussed this so far. It won’t be the last.

Um, are they on a bus now?

Yes, they are. Also: more pointless montaging! It was almost three minutes since the last one.

“I know Carl did you wrong, but is destroying something he cares that much about really going to make you feel good?” It goes on like this.

Now it’s an exposition flashback. Jebus, this episode is a mess.

Naturally, a learning Icelandic montage needed to be here.

And now it’s multiple exposition flashbacks to finish the episode.

“That’s for teaching me the true meaning of male friendship.” Surprisingly enough, this is not an episode of the G.I. Joe cartoon from the 1980s.

And now you know not to use beer kegs as swimming pools . . . and knowing is half the battle.

Destination episodes sometimes provide a little humor here and there, if for no other reason than the writers finally have something to talk about that hasn’t already been done half a dozen times. “The Saga of Carl” managed to nullify even that small advantage by making the whole thing about a drama-free discourse on friendship from four well known characters. (And that’s before we get into the weird flashbacks.) That’s a tough act to follow in terms of sheer Zombie Simpsons failure; let’s see if “Dangers on a Train” is up to the task:

And we open on a flashback to nine years ago when Bart is in a stroller and Homer has hair. I continue to not care about inter-episode continuity too much, but this is atrocious. They want to have the backdrop of Homer knocking Marge up accidentally, which we know happened in 1980, but change a bunch of other stuff. It’s really disorienting.

Flanders is there, because of course.

Okay, “Bikini Atoll” is pretty good.

I realize they have to set up the episode somehow, but is Marge really supposed to be unable to tell the word “Dolly” from the word “Sassy” when they’re in forty-point font in the middle of the screen? (And she’s been to the site before?)

So, Lovejoy is helping them because . . . what, the faulty database program that wrote this for them saw the word “train” on his character bio?

I complain a lot about exposition that is useless at everything except killing time, but what else am I supposed to do with things like Homer saying this after he runs out of the kitchen away from Marge, “The surprise is safe. The expression on her face will be priceless”? We just fucking saw that!

The phone rings, Marge answers it, and it’s Homer talking to Moe because they thought Marge didn’t have enough reason to continue talking with MacFarlane, or something? It’s a twofer: it’s unnecessary and doesn’t make sense.

They can’t even have Homer talk to his brain without it breaking into screaming anymore.

Marge having coffee with MacFarlane is about the third time she’s shut down conversation with him and then immediately lapsed. I sure enjoy watching someone repeat their actions over and over for twenty minutes.

During their conversation, Marge mentions that her 11th anniversary coming up. Head, please meet desk. The opening titles told us, “Almost nine years ago . . .”, which introduced a scene showing their first anniversary. That would make the current events their 10th anniversary since 9 + 1 = 10. We’re not even halfway through this, so there’s no way those two things could be more than about fifteen pages apart in the script. This is unconscionably lazy editing. Two dozen professional writers are responsible for this script and have the better part of a year to work on it, and it contains the kind of sloppy mistake you’d expect on a high school paper that was begun a 3am the day it was due. That’s amazing.

Honestly, I’m starting to think the exposition, especially Marge’s, is some kind of involuntary tic. As soon as the obviously wealthy old lady comes on their slightly renamed Downton Abbey thing, they cut to Marge to say “The dowager grandmum!”. People who watch that show obviously know who she is, and everyone else can figure out who she is by, you know, watching her. This one barely even counts as filler since it was so short. It makes no sense.

Does it count as fan service if they stop MacFarlane from singing? Follow up question: whose fans?

“Do you think we’ll last twenty-five years?” “Nothing should.” Well, that was thoughtful.

Hey, look, they decided to have MacFarlane burst in at the end because the A-plot, even with all the exposition, fell woefully short of filling the prescribed runtime.

And we end on two different dumbass musical numbers.

This episode is a prime example of why it’s not a good thing when the A-plot is barely B-plot in scope. This is theoretically about Marge thinking about cheating on Homer with Peter Griffin, but every time we see Marge interact with MacFarlane, she shuts it out as inconceivable. (Nevermind that just three seasons ago they had her all but fall in love with Flanders.) So Marge’s story in this episode basically goes like this: Homer makes me mad, I’ll spend some time with this guy, I’ll never cheat (repeat 3-5x). Her attraction to him doesn’t build on itself or deepen, it’s just the same damn thing over and over.

Meanwhile, Homer’s friends from Moe’s (and Reverend Lovejoy, because fuck it) are all working (apparently around the clock) on his big anniversary gift for her. For a split second, when they cut to the train being demolished accidentally, I thought something might be happening. Would Homer’s gift be destroyed and Marge’s suspicions about his forgetting get a little bit interesting? Of course not! The next time we see the train it’s all refurbished and good as new.

So, this story has two potential points of conflict: Marge cheating, and Homer’s anniversary gift failing. Neither one is ever seriously presented, and at the end – surprise, surprise – neither happens.

If funny stuff was happening along the way, you could maybe overlook some of that. Instead we get drawn out Downton Abbey scenes like “Bless it all, Polly, I love you. And we shall be wed by Boxing Day Eve, aka Christmas”. And the regular dialogue is no better, it’s godawful sitcom banter:

“Homey, I bet you’re wondering why I stayed on the computer until four am.” “Hey, those Yelp reviews don’t write themselves. Did you know a well placed one-star can destroy a mom and pop hardware in nothing flat?”

Nothing says sparkling writing like naturally flowing setup-punchline combos that end with mildly topical references! It’s just like how me and my friends talk.

All told, both of these episodes have stories that don’t go anywhere and don’t make sense, feature wretched writing from start to finish, and seem to be comprised mostly of time wasting filler. If nothing else, it’s a fitting send off for yet another forgettable season.

Tell Aaronson and Zykowski:

“I thought it was so opulent, like the Playboy Mansion, but non-sexual.” – Marge Simpson “That place is weird. A man in the bathroom kept handing me towels till I paid him to stop.” – Bart Simpson “Shoulda held out longer, boy.” – Homer Simpson

I’m still going to do Behind Us Forever for this week’s episodes, but the last two days have not been kind in terms of free time. In the interim, how about a little ratings schadenfreude?

Sunday’s episodes both scored dismal ratings, with the first one (“The Saga of Carl”) coming in at just 4.01 million viewers, and “Dangers on a Train” bumping up a bit to 4.52 million. The former is good for #2 on the all time least watched list, with even the higher rated second episode coming in at #10. Here is the current bottom twenty in terms of viewers:

#

S-Ep

Airdate

Viewers
(millions)

Episode Title

1

23-21

13-May-12

4.00

Ned ‘N Edna’s Blend

2

24-21

19-May-13

4.01

The Saga of Carl

3

24-20

12-May-13

4.05

Fabulous Faker Boy

4

24-17

14-Apr-13

4.07

What Animated Women Want

5

24-12

10-Feb-13

4.19

Love Is a Many-Splintered Thing

6

23-13

12-Feb-12

4.33

The Daughter Also Rises

7

24-8

16-Dec-12

4.41

To Cur With Love

8

24-19

6-May-13

4.43

Whiskey Business

9

24-18

28-Apr-13

4.48

Pulpit Friction

10

24-22

19-May-13

4.52

Dangers on a Train

11

24-13

17-Feb-13

4.57

Hardly Kirk-Ing

12

24-14

3-Mar-13

4.66

Gorgeous Grampa

13

23-20

6-May-12

4.75

The Spy Who Learned Me

14

23-22

20-May-12

4.79

Lisa Goes Gaga

15

24-15

10-Mar-13

4.85

Black-Eyed Please

16

23-18

15-Apr-12

4.86

Beware My Cheating Bart

17

24-16

17-Mar-13

4.89

Dark Knight Court

18

23-16

11-Mar-12

4.96

How I Wet Your Mother

19

22-18

10-Apr-11

5.00

The Great Simpsina

20

23-19

29-Apr-12

5.00

A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again

Of those twenty, nineteen are from Seasons 23 or 24, with the lone exception being from Season 22. Every single episode broadcast since February of this year has made the list. And not a single episode in all of Season 24 was viewed by more than 10 million people, the first time that’s ever happened. (The only one even close came after an NFL playoff game.)

In terms of average viewership, Season 24 ran away with the title of least viewed ever. After bumping along in the low seven million range from Season 20 through 22, last season fell down to just 6.13 million viewers on average. Season 24 sunk even further, averaging just 5.47 million viewers over its twenty-two episodes.

Now, the usual caveat about these ratings: these are just the overnight numbers. When there are significant changes to them (usually because a sporting event runs long), I make those updates, but these are not the fancy pants final numbers that take into account demographics, DVR viewers, and whatever else advertisers complain about. Nielsen only makes very limited data available to the public (at least, as far as I can tell), so these are the numbers I use, but don’t try reading anything into these in terms of “Will the show get cancelled?”.

The thousand monkeys at a thousand Blackberries who run FOX will be looking at those more detailed ratings as well as factoring in all kinds of things like whether or not a replacement would provide the same lead-in numbers for the rest of the Sunday lineup, how expensive said replacement would be, and how much Jean and company react when feces are thrown at them during meetings. (MacFarlane doesn’t even flinch.) Given the production lead time, we should be hearing something about a renewal beyond the current contract (on which there are 29 episodes left) sometime in calendar 2013, but that’s about all that can be said right now.

[Update 6:45pm EDT: Just saw this: CBS Takes Key Ratings Crown for First Time in 21 Years. FOX lost the battle for the nuts and gum people to CBS this year and their overall viewers were third at 7.0 million. No idea what the monkeys will think of losing to the old people network and having Zombie Simpsons dragging down their overall number, but it seemed worth mentioning.]

Useful Legal Tidbit

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